Psalm 53

0  To the leader: according to Mahalath. A Maskil of David.
1  Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”
  They are corrupt, they commit abominable acts;
  there is no one who does good.
2  God looks down from heaven on humankind
  to see if there are any who are wise,
  who seek after God.
3  They have all fallen away, they are all alike perverse;
  there is no one who does good,
  no, not one.
4  Have they no knowledge, those evildoers,
  who eat up my people as they eat bread,
  and do not call upon God?
5  There they shall be in great terror,
  in terror such as has not been.
 For God will scatter the bones of the ungodly;
  they will be put to shame, for God has rejected them.
6  O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
  When God restores the fortunes of his people,
  Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

Daily Prayer (based on Psalm 53:1)

Dear Lord, by Your grace I am not such a fool, since I do believe that you exist. But do I always live out this belief? Hardly! How often I live as if You weren't there. How easy it is for me to rely upon myself, acting as if I were in charge of the universe. And how easily I become overwhelmed, unable to bear the burden that belongs to You alone. Though I'm not the fool in what I say, I'm often the fool in how I live.

Postscript

When reading Psalm 53 you may have a sense of déjà vu, since it's very similar to Psalm 14. This doesn't in any way invalidate either psalm, of course. It simply gives us another opportunity to confront the truth of what it's like to live without God. As you can see from my prayer, I think that even those of us who are blessed to believe in God often live as functional atheists. My heart's desire is to learn to live each moment in the reality of God's presence.

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Except for the Scripture text, all material of The Daily Psalm Copyright © 2006 by Mark D. Roberts

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The Scripture text used in The Daily Psalm is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved